January power rankings: Golden Bears take a fall

1. Pandas hockey set to treat Glover with the kid gloves

Four straight shutouts is hard to beat, but that’s the go to for the Pandas hockey team, which climbed from fifth to first in the power rankings in a matter of one month.

When the Pandas initially cracked top five a few months ago, we credited the admittedly low score to all of their out of regulation results. While it was concerning at the time, head coach Howie Draper seems to have found the magical solution.

The solution is Grace Glover, the Pandas playoff goalie with seven shutouts, 11 wins, and a 0.69 goals against average over 13 games. For reference, anything under two is considered impressive.

2. Pandas volleyball has longest win streak

On a similar note, the Pandas volleyball team has climbed in the rankings, taking with them 15 straight wins and erasing the memory of those three losses to start the season. If they had a scoreless opponent, they might be first.

But let’s not get greedy. The Pandas have far from an easy closing season and a weekend series against the third ranked British Columbia Thunderbirds could prove to be problematic.

Anything less than a weekend sweep would be odd — we’d settle for the series split — but giving up both games would set a bad, albeit unlikely tone for playoffs.

3. Pandas basketball, most consistent regular season ever

Consistency is boring but effective.

On any given weekend, you know the Pandas basketball team, and frankly all women’s teams, are going to outperform in their conference. We’ve seen them steal 15 and 11 straight wins — some close, some blowouts. Now basketball comes in with 12, an undefeated home game record, and the least amount of losses.

What else is there to say? Just that they’re tied for first in Canada West and a comfortable closing season has them sitting pretty well for playoffs.

4. Bears’ volleyball, what was that?

You’ll find this is the theme for the Golden Bears over all sports — they can come back from losing one, two, or even multiple games while staying a top tiered team. But some games shouldn’t have been lost.

Two five set losses in an attempted comeback over Trinity Western was understandable, they’re an excellent team. But a five set defeat to Thompson River, a team with a total of four wins thus far, is not as understandable.

Those three straight losses cost the Bears their best in U Sports title, a drop from first to fourth in Canada West, and the power rankings.

5. Bears’ hockey goes from second to last

This fall was disappointing and avoidable.

It started with the Bears’ surprising loss to the MacEwan Griffins, followed by a weekend sweep from the Saskatchewan Huskies, and finishing off with over 400 penalty minutes. Now the Bears, for the first time this season, have people wondering if they’ll perform against low-ranking teams.

Gone are the weekends where blowouts where the only option. Instead we see a positive Friday night, followed by days where the Bears’ loaded roster chases bottom seeded teams into the nerve-wracking third period.

It’s a bit odd, and if they weren’t able to fall back on a series of uninterrupted goals and exceptional goaltending, they might not have made the list at all. Now that playoffs are fast approaching, the Bears have one final weekend to clean up a game that has head coach Ian Herbers saying, “we need to be smarter and play smarter.”